Story:The Distress Call
The first part of the The Swarm story arc. Prologue "The specimen has escaped, it's going rampant and has taken over the facility! It's bringing the bodies back to life and-...no, it found me! Destroy this pla-...!". In the year 2142 the Drahoni government discovers a parasitic alien lifeform, they captured it for study to see the effects on it's behaviour and for the possible uses in medicine. The tiny creature was taken to Methiorikh for further study, several months later at the turning of the year the facility went dark. A distress Call was transmitted from the facility requesting for it's destruction, the government however had other plans... They have assembled a relative large army led by three teams called Gamma, Zeta and Servithon to retrieve the gathered data stored in the facility. Chapter 1: Briefing A Xzeron Jorthanio with the name of Gevariotho hovered through the room, he was tasked with informing the assigned soldiers with their task. He knew the Xzeron troops wouldn't have any problems as it would be like any other assignment, but the Drahoni troops would react differently, especially when they hear who will lead them. The room was slightly lit, with the only light coming from Gevariotho himself. The door opened and 3 Drahoni officers walked in, their names are Mozhat Verszian, Papyerosa Helithors and Adreghonis Yolthur. They are tasked with leading the bulk of the Drahoni forces while they have to take orders from 'Him'. They went to their seats and sat down to listen to what Gevariotho had to say. "Good day to all of you officers. As you are aware I have been tasked with informing you of your mission," He explained, "several days ago a top secret research facility owned by your government has gone dark, no transmission was sent and thus your politicians fear something might've gone terribly wrong. They have assembled a small army for you to lead to investigate the cause of this 'problem', they want you to find out the cause of the black-out and retrieve all data if necessary." One of the officers, Mozhat, looked at Gevariotho and asked him something: "What were they researching? If it was a simple weapon design it is impossible we receive an army to clear this mission." The others seemed to agree with him as it sounded logicaly, why an army? "They were studying an organism, other information is highly classified. One more thing, when you arrive at your ship, the 'Da Tenibran oot Ithenya', you will find your superior officer for this assignment. He will lead this mission personally. He will go in first and get out last, you are to carry out his orders." the Jorthanio explained. The officers stood up again and left the room, they were to leave at 0330 hours. They talked with each other discussing the reason why they are being left in the dark about the research conducted on Methiorikh. Nevertheless they prepared to ship out, when they reached the ship and reported in the command center they were surprised to see who their superior was. "You!?" Papyerosa yelled in astonishment as he saw the male Human. The figure turned around and overlooked the room to see who yelled at him. "Is something the problem officers?" He asked while leaning on a railing. "Of all people they can give as our superiors they give us an assassin! I don't care what command said, I'm not receiving orders from you Enak Higgs!" Mozhat yelled in anger. "Then we'll have a lot of fun gentlemen. Command has given me the clearance to, how shall I put it, 'terminate' obstacles. So I understand that now you will all do as I say, I won't give much orders, you all know what to do. We all have our own plans. I will lead my teams and you will lead yours, when I'm in need of help you will aid me. Did I make myself clear?" Enak said while keeping a close eye on the 3 officers, Adreghonis, the sole officer who still hadn't said a word, was paying close attention to the Drahoni officers behind Enak. They were members of the secret intelligence service, Adreghonis had the skill to lip-read and understood what they were talking about. How many of them will return? What will be the results? How is your wife doing? To give an example of some of the subjects they were talking about. Enak noticed Adreghonis's staring and shouted his name. "Anything the problem with you?" He shouted, Adreghonis was slightly startled as he didn't pay attention to his surroundings and replied with a muttering answer: "I-...nothing, sir." Enak raised his right brown and said he could leave which he did immediatly to join up with Mozhat and Papyerosa. When he looked behind him he saw the SIS members leaving the ship. Chapter 2: Not Your Average Holiday 2 days ago the ship had left for Methiorikh and had finally arrived to the freezing world. The average temperature here was -42 degrees Celsius and frequent blizzards obscured the vision of everyone wandering outside buildings and vehicles. This isn't your average holiday resort. Lights flashed on, the alarm sounded and woke up all sleeping soldiers, which consisted of 87% of the crew. "Alert, all crewmembers are to report to battle-stations immediatly! This is not a drill, I repeat, this is not a drill! Crewmembers are to be prepared for disembark within 15 minutes!" The alarm boomed, the ship was in slight chaos as troops ran through each other trying to get to their stations, some were jumping to their battle-station while getting their boots on. Within 14 minutes and 39 seconds the entire crew was ready, battle-stations were manned and the teams were prepared to leave the ship at command. Enak Higgs walked on a walkaway close to the ceiling in the big hangar inspecting the troops, none was absent and he was pleased by this. "The crew is clearly motivated. We'll inform them that the operation is going to commence," he said, "Men! You will go to your Zanvugl and prepare to disembark the ship! You will land at the coordinats that will be transmitted to you, once you land and leave your dropship you will enter the facility and do as your CO asks you to do!" Enak told to the soldiers present in the hangar, each and everyone one of them were eagerly listening to his orders. When he was done he saluted, first in the Human way, afterwards in the Drahoni way. All troops ran to their dropships, the hissing sound of engines warming up echoed through the hangar and soon the first dropship began to ascend to leave the hangar. One by one the dropships flew through the hangar's forcefields, their destination, Methiorikh. A soldier looking outside the window saw ice form on the dropship's hull when they flew through the atmosphere, clouds obscured their vision at first, after a while the clouds were switched with the blizzards. 7 minutes after the dropships left the ship they had landed on the surface and began making their way to the facility. Scouts reported no unusual activity, there was nothing outside the complex. The teams slowly made their way across the snow field creating an open terrain in front of the facility. Without any problem they had reached the facility's perimiter and made their way to the entrance, several teams began climbing the building to get to the roof. 2 Xeyons, Mehrozi and Vayagh, pulled open the big titanium doors. The first thing everyone saw was blood covering the floor and shell casings that lay everywhere, the lack of guns near the casings and a corpse near the blood was only noticed by few. One by one the soldiers went into the complex, all Xeyons and Asnes stayed outside to guard the entrance from anything wanting to go in or go out. The flashlights of the Drahoni's weapons lit the long hallway leading to the inner complex. As they saw no immediate danger the teams took a pace in moving through this hallway, after a short march of 8 minutes they reached the end of the hallway and came out in a large open room filled with overhanging bridges connecting hallways with each other. "I hate research facilities, those scientists always make such stupid mazes!" A soldier said. They let their guard down and scattered throughout the room carefully keeping an eye on the bridges. Mazhot activated a hologram of the facility to find out where the generators are, Gevariotho indicated the place quickly and showed all of them the way. Papyerosa ordered Adreghonis and his troops to stay in this area and set up a small camp, he did as he asked him and ordered his men to unpack some equipment. Generators, lights and sentry guns were scattered across the room. ---- Enak Higgs and his team had landed on top of the facility and were way ahead of the Drahoni soldiers climbing the buildings. They entered the building with a vent they found and came out in some sort of control room, all machinery here was offline. They spread and searched for clues about what exactly has happened. One of them found a camera with the recording of an intellicam, Enak Higgs took the camera and watched the recording while his troops were watching his back. ---- Mozhat and Papyerosa's teams were following their leaders who slowly made their way to the Generator room on sub-level 3. After a while they found stairs which they used to descend quickly to B3F, once there they could feel an increase in heat, were the generators still online? They moved forwards with their guns ready for action, each corridor created tension as they all thought there could be something lurking in the shadows. Once they reached the Generator room they stood for a surprise, a small campfire was ignited here, there was nobody left but a can of food was left behind, the food was still warm. "Someone must've been here recently." Mozhat said to Papyerosa, his troops were spreading out across the room, one of them found a small puddle of blood. The two officers went to investigate, it was still fresh. They searched for the generator and once found restarted the whole thing to lit the facility. Lights turned on and revealed several creatures on top of the generator looking at the soldiers. Chapter 3: Horrific discoveries Enak watched the recording, he saw how scientists and security officers were being killed one by one. He saw them being torn apart and thrown on a pile, some of them stood up and ran off to kill others. He immediatly remembered the first Human zombie movies on Earth, but once he saw some kind of monster running through the room on the recording he became pale. The creature was killing security officers, either by slashing them apart or eating them alive. It was at this moment that gunshots echoed through the facility. ---- The creatures jumped on Mozhat's troops, those that weren't attacked opened fire on the creatures hoping to save their fellow soldiers. Papyerosa ordered his men to retreat while Mozhat and his remaining soldiers gave covering fire. He saw Mozhat's men get killed one by one by decapitation, when he eventually reached the stairs he contacted Mozhat but didn't get a reply. ---- Enak ordered his team to move out, they made their way to the large open area in the middle of the facility to get to the ground floor faster. They ran for several minutes and had to open a door to reach this area, Enak began hacking the panel as it didn't accept his override codes, his troops warned him of hostiles coming in fast. Enak was nearly done when his team was forced to open fire, when he could hear the roars of these feral monsters get too close he stood up, turned around and drew his sword. He ordered someone else to continue he hacking while he fights alongside his team. When he heard the door open he turned around and saw Mozhat stand there with a dead soldier in his hand, his eyes seemed hollow, feral. Enak knew what happened to him and tried to pull his gun, Mozhat kicked it out of Enak's hands and grabbed him by the throat. Mozhat's head exploded into small bits as one of Enak's men shot him in the head, he did not seem to be hindered by this as he did not release Enak. To free himself Enak used his sword to cut off Mozhat's arm which released him directly but crawled away, Mozhat's body ran off. They closed the door behind them and used a Hover pack to get down, they jumped simoltaniously and used their H-packs, as they like to call it, to have a soft landing. Enak called out to Adreghonis to order his men to retreat, Papyerosa came running out of a hallway with his troops and ordered Adreghonis to follow him, not bein awate of what was actually going on he looked to the hallway and saw hundreds of mutated Drahoni running towards him. He immediatly began to run, his troops did the same, he didn't even care about an explanation, all he wanted was to escape. When they came running through the large steel door they were welcomed by the Xeyons and Asnes waiting for the last survivors coming out as they began to open fire to the hallway to take out the monstrosities. "What happened in there, was the mission a succes?" Gevariotho asked Enak. "Ask that to the men and women who died today! We have the intel, but at the cost of something far worse than anything Humanity, the Drahoni or the Xzeron could ever invent! Hail the ship, we're leaving right now before these things get to us!" Enak replied. Gevariotho contacted the Da Tenibran oot Ithenya to pick them up, he informed Enak that a dropship would be here shortly but suddenly stopped and looked up at the sky that could not be seen due to the blizzards. "All units, close that door and aim your weapons to the sky!" He shouted as he tried to get as low as possible. The two Xeyons closed the door while the Asnes pointed their guns to the sky, when the Xeyons were finished a howl cut through the wind giving all survivors the chills. The Xeyons looked up and seemed to show signs of fear, Enak wondered if that was even possible for A.I.'s. Vayagh walked towards Oliviuth to help her resolve a jam in her right arm, a shadow came flying through the blizzard and landed on Vayagh tearing it's head and left arm off in an instant before flying off again, nobody was able to react. The Asnes opened fire pointing to the sky until the dropships arrived and they could retreat. One by one the soldiers got into their dropships and left the planet's surface, when they broke through the blizzard they looked down, the shadow followed them as it flew out of the blizzard with magnificent speed. "Evasive actions!" Enak yelled to warn the pilot who noticed the threat on time to evade the swing of the monster's scythes. Despite their best efforts, the dropships were being taken out one by one by the monster. Enak fell when the monster gripped itself on their dropship but was shot off by another dropship, Adreghonis was manning the cannon and thus saved their lives only to be taken down afterwards by the monster. The remaining two Drahoni dropships finally arrived into space where they through the monster wouldn't follow them, but it did. Due to the fact that they were close enough to the ship saved their lives as it fired it's tertiar gun destroying the monster in one blow. The dropships made their way to the ship's hangar and landed, when the soldiers left the dropship one by one they were being scanned for potential infection, none was found. "Watch out for the dropship!" Someone yelled as a tentacle gripped a soldier by the throat and pierced it's skin, Enak remembered the monster attacking the ship and realised it simply wished to bring the infection onboard by using the dropship. Epilogue "This is Luxwarz Yethrok, the Captain of the Da Tenibran oot Ithenya. The ship has been captured by alien lifeforms, if you read this, do not attempt to board this ship, destroy it at all costs and destroy the remains! This is my last recording, if you read this, honour my last wish." Category:Articles by User:Horakoeri